Wednesday, 20 March 2013

'Violence will not be tolerated by our armed forces'

As news stories go, it didn’t seem
the most – well… newsworthy. A bit like being told France is full of French
people or the Sahara desert has lots of sand.

Nevertheless, someone at the BBC decreed that it was the
most interesting item on what was admittedly a fairly quiet morning for news.

“Younger members of the armed forces returning from duty are
more likely to commit violent offences than the rest of the population,” we
were told. Then, standing back a little from this less-than-amazing assertion,
the newsreader added the rider, “a study suggests”.

In other news, professional sportspeople tend to be fitter than
the man on the Kesgrave omnibus. A study suggests.

But let’s consider this a moment. The violence of young
servicemenmay not be surprising, but it
is worth thinking about.

The report, first published in the medical journal The Lancet,
comes from analysis by the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College, London.
It is based on the records of 14,000 British service personnel who have served
in Iraq or Afghanistan.

And the headline story is about people who are paid to be
violent abroad continuing to be violent when they get home. As if anyone should
be shocked by that.

There are, of course, several reasons why this might happen.
And several ways, too, of spinning the figures.

Supporters of military discipline may point with pride to the
fact that military personnel are slightly less likely to break the law than the
average person.

As if there was any average person out there. It might be interesting
to see how the forces compare in this respect with people in other jobs – with
teachers, for example, or the police. Or journalists. Or the unemployed.

Those figures, however – without which the bare statistic about
the military doesn’t really mean a lot – are not available.

On the other side of the coin there’s the fact that men under
30 who have been in combat zones are three times more likely to commit violent
offences than those who haven’t.

An army man says “the vast majority” of forces personnel commit
no offence.

Someone else might think it shocking that 20 per cent of our
young soldiers have committed a violent offence after coming home. That’s one
in five of those under-30s.

One suggested reason for this aggressive behaviour is the
mental problem now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s the aspect,
naturally, that the Institute of Psychiatry is most interested in.

Age, rank and experience have all been identified as factors in
the likelihood of violence.

Those under 30, those in the lower ranks, and those who have
been shot at are likelier to offend. (And basketball players are likely to be
taller than jockeys.)

Those who drink a lot are also more likely to get violent. (And
jockeys tend to be slimmer than sumo wrestlers.)

Put those findings together (not necessarily the bits about
jockeys) and you have a pretty obvious chicken-or-egg situation. Which came
first, the drink or the stress?

And, to be fair to Professor Simon Wessely, who led the
research, he’s aware of the most obvious fact underlying the whole issue.

“The military don’t select chess-playing choirboys,” he says.
“They select people who often come from difficult and aggressive backgrounds – and
they’re the ones who are most likely to end up in the parts of the military that
do the actual fighting.”

Quite rightly, though, he’s concerned for the mental welfare of
the troops.

And the inevitable difficulty many have in adjusting between
“out there” and “back here”, where vastly different behaviour is expected of
them.

Acting in what might seem a properly military way on patrol in
Kabul may not look so good in Tavern Street. (It may not look that great to the
ordinary people of Kabul, either, but that’s another matter.)

The MOD spokesman quoted in the BBC report seemed unaware of
the irony in his words when he said: “Any violent offence is unacceptable and
will not be tolerated by our armed forces.”

Professor Wessely doesn’t draw – at least, not publicly – what
seems to me the no-brain conclusion from all of this research.

That if we really cared about our young people; if we really
considered their mental (and physical) well-being; if we really didn’t want
them to behave violently back here (or out there); if we really supported our
troops… we wouldn’t go sending them off into needless wars in the first place.